


Why We Fight

by Mek



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Real Steel (2011)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mek/pseuds/Mek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie isn’t old enough to remember too much about the Kaiju War. Mostly he’s just got vague memories. His mother holdin’ him tight and tellin’ him It’s gonna be ok, baby while they watch the news. Fireworks and holographic Jaegers lightin’ up the night sky. The strange sense that one night the world took one big sigh of relief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why We Fight

Charlie isn’t old enough to remember too much about the Kaiju War. Mostly he’s just got vague memories. His mother holdin’ him tight and tellin’ him _It’s gonna be ok, baby_ while they watch the news. Fireworks and holographic Jaegers lightin’ up the night sky. The strange sense that one night the world took one big sigh of relief.

Charlie is old enough to have spent a few summers runnin’ around pretending he was a Ranger like the Beckets and Weis, acting out epic tales of world saving self-sacrifice without any of the death part. And maybe, just maybe that’s why it was so easy for him to slip from boxer to bot jockey.

Maybe it’s why Ambush, with his Gipsy Danger rip-off decal, made him say _I’ll take that one_ when Charlie knew damn well he wouldn’t get far with it.

Maybe it’s why Noisy Boy’s sleek lines and voice-activation made him gleefully plunk down a chunk of change.

But it’s not until Atom, silly, scrapped, sparring bot, hunk-a-junk Atom, that he feels like he begins to understand what it means to give a part of yourself to a machine and have it give back. It’s not until he connects with his son through Atom that he begins to imagine the absolute devastation that Herc Hansen must have felt.

It’s not until then that he begins to fight.

For Max.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted my headcanon that Real Steel and Pacific Rim take place in the same 'verse and then I kinda ended up writing this.


End file.
